Archive for May, 2006

Presbyterian seminary publishes online “church and culture” magazine

Wednesday, May 31st, 2006

I got on the mailing list for Columbia Theological Seminary (Flash required; bad bad bad!) of Decatur, Georgia more than a decade ago when I was looking for a theological school, and bless their hearts they’ve followed me for seven addresses since.

Now they’re publishing a rather interesting looking online magazine called @ This Point which, […]

The parson wore black

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006

OK, so you’re not giving up your black gown and you’re hot as blazes in your un-air-conditioned church? Wear the gown open. Wear it over street clothes: no stole, no collar, no bands, no hood. That way, if you begin to swoon you can shuck it unobtrusively. (I have a couple a time.) And demand […]

“Where, oh where, are you tonight?”

Monday, May 29th, 2006

I am watching a show on CMT, called Twenty Greatest Country Comedy Shows while making some crunchy-granola vegetarian blue-state chick pea dish. Why? Because John Schneider is hosting it, that’s why: do you need me to spell it out? (But funny, because I was more of a Tom Wopat fan.) I realized I had been […]

The parson wore white

Monday, May 29th, 2006

PeaceBang has been promoting the alb as a solution for heat-stroke in the pulpit, but I can’t agree so I’m back to opining what ministers ought to wear.

Ubuntu 6.06 “Dapper Drake” upgrade pending

Monday, May 29th, 2006

I’m upgrading my home computer to the release candidate of Ubuntu Linux 6.06 (”Dapper Drake”), something a couple of you are interested in. A brief report if it goes well, and a bit of quiet from me if it doesn’t!

Manfred Klein dingbats for church newsletters

Sunday, May 28th, 2006

Sometimes Manfred Klein makes really good typefaces, and some are not so good. Some are great for German, and so-so for English. I use bunches — in part because his licensing is so loose that you can use them without worry — including the one that makes the nameplate above. Until recently, I’ve stuck to […]

The hat we all want

Sunday, May 28th, 2006

No, PeaceBang, this isn’t my reply yet — still researching it — but I ran across the comment by dear Hank, where he said:

What our pal Unity and i are trying to get our hands on are Parson hats, you know those round flat hats that preachers always wear in cowboy movies and as soon […]

Without the body: the catafalque

Sunday, May 28th, 2006

Ages ago, I said I would work on some ideas for remembering the dead when no physical remains could be found. This weekend seems a good time to pick that back up, and let’s begin with the catafalque.

Shopping for vestments: Wippell’s catalog online

Saturday, May 27th, 2006

Of all the vestment makers out there, I think Wippell’s is my favorite. (Not that I have any of their gear, but the Boy can dream.) They’ve had a website for ages: a backwards, nearly useless website. At last they’ve gotten parts of their catalog scanned and up as PDF files. (But as always, no […]

Compact fluorescent bulbs for church and home?

Friday, May 26th, 2006

Summer is coming and heat with it. In the South, there’s a custom of turning out the lights to feel cooler. But it is more than a feeling: nearly all the power going into a standard incandescent light bulb exits as heat. That’s a double energy whammy in lost light and lost cool air. […]


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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States